What Might Have Been

by Glenda Sanders

  Sad, Barbara thought morosely. God, it was the epitome of understatement. How many women had she heard describe the life-long anguish of giving up a child? Reunification stories of long separated parents and children who’d been searching for each other had almost become cliché on television talk shows.

  But if “sad” was an understatement when used to describe the angst of giving up a child, so was the term “not easy” when used to describe the difficulties that raising a child would present to a young woman like Missy. Motherhood would forever change her life, cutting short her early youth by throwing her into one of the most adult roles in society.

  There was no simple solution, no quick fix, no painless alternative to Missy’s situation. Or Richard’s, in his role as Missy’s father. Missy felt guilty. Richard felt responsible. Both were tormented.

  Barbara realized suddenly that she had rushed headlong into their torment with her heart totally exposed. And that the only thing any of them could be sure of was that from this point on, all of their lives would be irrevocably changed.

  8

  BARBARA HAD JUST stepped out of the shower when the phone rang. She answered with a standard hello.

  “If I don’t kiss you within the next hour, I may explode” came the reply.

  “Richard!” The name rushed forth as her heart danced at the sound of his voice.

  “I, uh, could sneak away from home for a while if I thought a certain woman would welcome my company.”

  “I just finished showering,” she said. “Should I dress?”

  “Not on my account.”

  But she did dress—in a floor-length gown of red, lace-trimmed chiffon, an extravagant garment that she’d bought on a whim and kept wrapped in tissue, saving it for a special night.

  Like tonight.

  And a special man.

  Like Richard.

  He arrived within the hour with a bottle of wine and a supermarket bouquet of flowers, but the wine went unopened, and the flowers never made it into a vase.

  He had not planned to take her with the ardor and haste of a soldier returning home from the Crusades after a decade of abstinence, but he hadn’t anticipated that she’d be wearing a garment as wispy as thin fog, or that she would greet him with a smile as warm as sunshine and a kiss as hot as the sun itself. He hadn’t expected her to reach out to him with hands that were, at once, greedy and generous, taking and giving pleasure as she eagerly loosened his clothing and stroked his body.

  It was the first time a woman had ever undressed him that way, as though she could hardly wait to touch him. Her breath fanned hotly over his skin as she planted short, moist kisses along his shoulder blade, and then on his chest, to his sternum. She moved lower, zigzagging across his ribs and midriff until she reached the waistband of his slacks, which she unhooked and unzipped with an endearing and arousing blend of impatience and inexperience. She peeled them off, chasing them down his thighs with tiny kisses, coaxing one foot, then the other up so she could remove his shoes and pull his pants over them.

  When she pressed her lips to his thigh again, the intensity was unbearable. Richard knelt, bringing his face level with hers. He set the wine aside on the floor and handed Barbara the bouquet. She lifted it to smell a rose that was just beginning to open. There was something in the gesture that cast them into roles as old as time: the fair maiden and the lovestruck beau.

  Never had Richard been more aware of his own manhood as when he looked at Barbara’s face framed by those flowers. Soft, sensual, gentle, she evoked in him a feeling of strength and power too elemental to fall subject to political correctness. In that instant he wanted her so badly that he would have died to possess her, and he loved her so thoroughly that he would have killed to protect her.

  His gaze never parted with hers as he covered the smile forming on her mouth with a deep, claiming kiss. Wrapping one arm around his neck, she lay back on the floor, pulling him with her, and the flowers went the way of the forgotten wine bottle as his body settled over hers.

  The gown, so seductive and feminine, turned out, like a woman, to possess strength that defied its delicate appearance. The springy, crawly chiffon took on a life of its own as it fought Richard’s every effort to touch Barbara skin to skin, binding and bunching in opposition to his every move. Thin, sheer, frail-looking, the fabric nevertheless separated them as efficiently as a suit of mail.

  Finally, with a groan of frustration, Richard rolled aside and sat up.

  “What is it?” Barbara asked with effort.

  Staring, Richard took in her bruised lips, her flushed face, her breasts rising and falling with labored breathing. He’d never seen a woman more ready for loving. “It’s war,” he growled. “Plain and simple. I have met the enemy, and it is a formidable foe.”

  Barbara was trying to concentrate. “War? Enemy?”

  Richard gathered a handful of chiffon and crushed it in his fist. “It’s this or me, Barbaloo. Make your choice.”

  Grinning, Barbara teased, “I should choose the gown on the grounds that you called me...that name.” He’d first taunted her with the name after she’d confided that her middle name was Louise.

  “But—” she leaned toward him and slid her hand across his chest “—since you called me that the first night we made love, it has sort of acquired sentimental connotations, so...”

  Her hand moved lower. Her fingers tantalized. With a look that told her she was playing with fire, he stood abruptly, then extended his hand to help her up. “Come on. As long as we have to stop what we were doing to get rid of that gown, we might as well find someplace more comfortable.”

  “Good idea,” Barbara agreed. “That floor is almost as hard as you are.”

  “Forged steel is not as hard as I am right now,” he said drolly.

  Barbara smiled coquettishly. “Why don’t you quit bragging and make love to me...Ricky?”

  She was off before the hated nickname had fully parted her tongue, and he was right behind her, following her into the bedroom, where she stopped next to the bed.

  “Even my mother knows better than to call me Ricky!” he said, feeling greatly at a disadvantage in his socks and undershorts, while she looked so regal in that dratted gown with the full circular skirt billowing around her.

  Barbara yanked the bedspread and top sheet back and plumped the nearest pillow. Then she perched on the edge of the bed, her brilliant gown draped widely, and smiled cunningly. “Why don’t you show me why I shouldn’t?”

  Dare him, would she? Richard yanked off one sock, then the other, then his briefs, then stalked to the bed, stopping within feet of her. “Exhibit A.”

  Barbara’s eyes narrowed and her expression softened. She drew in a soft, deep breath and then reached out with trembling fingers to stroke him. “Very impressive,” she said with wonder in her voice.

  The intimate caress rushed through Richard with the force of a physical blow. Staggered by the intensity of it, he dropped onto the bed beside her. She urged him backward, until he was lying down, and wrapped her hand around him.

  “Hard as forged steel,” she cooed.

  The sound of her voice, hoarse with passion, and the sight of her touching him was almost as arousing as the actual pressure of her fingers. He watched as she opened a packet from the trinket box and sheathed him. He felt slightly detached, as if viewing a scene through a telescope, yet, at the same time, he was fully cognizant of the pressure of her fingers as she unrolled the condom, of the color rising in her cheeks as she explored in minute detail the shape and size of him, of the change in her breathing as she became increasingly aroused.

  Gathering the wide skirt of her gown and draping it over his chest, she moved astride him, emitting a guttural sigh as she took him inside her. With his arms and hands beneath the gown, he was able, finally, to touch her the way he longed to. He explored the curve of her waist, stroked the small of her back, kneaded the fullness of her hips, filling his hands with her as she undulated above him.
>
  Her lovemaking consumed his every thought and every sensation until, finally, she tensed and cried his name and her body convulsed around him. He climaxed soon afterward, glorying in the miracle of the pleasure that he brought to her. She was there, in his arms, stroking his hair, kissing his cheeks gently, pulling the million fragments of him back together.

  Eventually, Barbara eased off him and lay beside him. Richard turned onto his side, draping an arm and leg over her to hold her near. For several minutes they remained there, nestled together, silent except for the sound of their breathing, before Richard kissed Barbara on the cheek and told her he’d be right back.

  He rejoined her quickly and draped his arm across her pillow, inviting her to snuggle. She did so enthusiastically and said, “Welcome back. I missed you.”

  “I hurried.”

  “I missed you, anyway.”

  Nuzzling her hair aside, he kissed her nape. “I missed you, too. That’s why I hurried. God, you smell good.”

  “You caught me right out of the shower.”

  A minute, perhaps two, passed before he said, “Barbara?”

  “Oo-oo-oo,” she groaned. “I hope it’s not too serious.”

  “What?”

  “The question that’s imminent after you say my name that way. I hope it’s not too...difficult.” She rolled so she could see his face, at least in profile. “This moment is too nice to mess up with anything tough.”

  “It’s not tough. I’m just...curious about something.”

  “Fire away, then.”

  “In the bathroom—I couldn’t help noticing the birth control package.”

  “The sponge.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And I just wondered... I thought—”

  Barbara sighed dismally. “That I was sterile?”

  Richard nodded.

  “I’m not sterile.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I couldn’t have children. Dennis and I couldn’t have children.”

  “Dennis was sterile?”

  “Not completely. His sperm were a little sluggish, but that wasn’t the reason he and I couldn’t make a baby. Our...I guess you’d call it ‘individual body chemistries’ were incompatible. The doctors said it wasn’t entirely impossible, but it would be close to miraculous if it happened.”

  “There was nothing they could do about it?”

  “Nothing that Dennis would have tolerated,” she replied, then smiled softly at his look of consternation. “Dennis found the various tests for fertility embarrassing. Any other humiliating procedures were out of the question.”

  The sadness in her eyes tore at Richard’s heart. It was the same sadness that always haunted her eyes when she talked about her marriage. Lifting his hand to her face, he traced her lips with his thumb. “I didn’t mean to dredge up painful memories.”

  “They’re not painful,” she said. “Just...sad. It would have been much simpler if I had been infertile. That way, Dennis could have blamed me outright.”

  “He would have blamed you?”

  “Dennis was a tidy man. He liked to assign blame. When he couldn’t, it offended his sense of order. So when he decided that it was time to have a child, and I didn’t get pregnant, I was tested. And tested. And tested. And when the tests came up with no answers, the doctors suggested that Dennis—”

  She shook her head. “I think I knew our marriage was over the day Dennis threw a fit because he had to deposit sperm in a cup.” Her attitude changed to one of defiance as she remembered. “I’d been poked and prodded and stuck with needles and probed with cameras, and he found it humiliating to deposit sperm in a cup. He was offended by the dirty magazines they kept in the rooms for the convenience of the patients. After that, we were just going through the motions.”

  Richard rolled atop her and cradled her face in his hands. “I should have found you a long time ago. I should have looked for you. I tried to do the right thing with Christine, but when it was obvious it would never work, I should have turned heaven and earth over to find you.”

  The intensity in his eyes was frightening. Barbara couldn’t believe what he was suggesting. “Richard, what are you saying? I was married. I was committed to making my marriage work. Do you think I would have just walked away because I got a better offer?”

  “Of course not.” He exhaled a sigh of pure anguish and closed his eyes for a moment, as if shutting away pain, then opened them again to look at her face. “I don’t know what to think anymore. I just know that nothing has ever felt as right as having you next to me like this, and that if it had taken a hundred years instead of seventeen, I would have felt the same way when I walked into your office and saw you. And I know that no matter how badly I’ve managed to screw up my life, and no matter how confused I am about everything else that is going on, that this...this—”

  He kissed her ruggedly, not gently but with a wealth of feeling, and when he tore his mouth from hers, he was breathing heavily. As was Barbara. “Us,” he continued. “You. Me. Here. Together like this—this is right.”

  “I can’t argue with you,” she said, driving her fingers into his hair. “I’d be lying if I tried.”

  She pulled his head down, lifting hers from the pillow to meet him. The kiss was immediately deep and desperate, and so was the lovemaking that followed.

  “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Richard asked when his power of speech returned.

  “Hurt me?” Barbara asked, still gloriously, gloriously fulfilled. Her gown was in a cloudlike heap on the far side of the room, and the bedding looked as though it had been whipped by a tornado.

  Barbara herself felt as if she wore the mark of his possession from head to feet, wore it in the form of whisker burns, kiss-bruised lips, hopelessly disheveled hair, and flushed, tingling skin. “Don’t you know,” she said somewhat breathlessly, “that some women wait an entire lifetime to have the kind of sex we just had? I feel as though I’ve had every single inch of you.”

  “You’d have to turn me inside out to find an inch of me you didn’t,” he said.

  Barbara stretched languidly. “There’s a lot to be said for seventeen years’ worth of fantasy for foreplay.”

  “There’s even more to be said for being with the right person,” Richard said.

  Barbara’s grin was positively lewd as she admitted, “There is a certain amount of chemistry between us.”

  “Something along the lines of nitro and glycerine,” Richard said. “Which makes it doubly frustrating to think about all the years we’ve wasted.”

  “Spilt milk,” Barbara said. “Let’s just...enjoy the here and now and try not to devote too much energy on regrets. Things have a way of working out in their own good time.”

  “I can’t touch you without thinking about all the times I should have been touching you and wasn’t.”

  “Sexually speaking, this is the very best time I could have linked up with you.”

  Richard looked at her askance.

  “It’s true,” she said. “If we’d made love when you were nineteen, you would have been at your sexual peak. Now I’m at mine. So, technically, it would have been better for you back then, but it’s better for me now.”

  Richard chortled. “If it had been any better, I’d be in the emergency room.”

  “See?” she teased. “You would never have said that at nineteen. You’d be looking around for more.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me you’d like a little more, I’m a dead man. You may make me feel nineteen again, but my working parts are definitely thirty-something.”

  Barbara laughed. “With men, it’s an endurance thing. With women, it’s more a contented glow type of thing.”

  He gathered her into his arms for a loud, playful kiss. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.”

  “I could use a shower,” Barbara said, pushing up on one elbow.

  “I thought you just got out of the shower.”

  “You’ve undone all that,
” she said.

  “I could be persuaded to scrub your back,” Richard said. “As long as you promise not to take advantage of me when we’re all slippery.”

  “My working parts are thirty-something, too,” she assured him.

  “Well, then—”

  They were not even off the bed when the phone rang. “It’s after ten,” Barbara said, alarmed.

  “It’s probably Missy,” Richard said sheepishly. “I came here from my office and had the calls on my back line forwarded.”

  “Then you answer,” Barbara said. “She might recognize my voice.”

  Richard nodded. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think about how compromising it would be for you to have a man answering your phone this time of night.”

  The phone rang a second time. “For Pete’s sake, answer it,” Barbara said. “If someone asks for me, tell them they have the wrong number. They’ll think they misdialed and call back.”

  Richard picked up the phone on the bedside table. “R. Blake.” He gave Barbara a thumbs-up sign as he continued. “Hi, sweetheart. Did you find what you needed at the library?” He listened for a moment. “You’re not feeling bad, are you? Oh. Good. Okay. You do that. I shouldn’t be too much longer. Another hour or so. You lock up good and tight. Yeah. I’m glad you called. Good night.”

  He hung up the phone and looked at Barbara. “We’re, uh, still getting used to our independence since my mother left. If I have to be away after dark, I like to check in with her, or vice versa. She met a study group at the library tonight. They’re working on some project.”

  “You don’t have to explain parenthood to me,” Barbara said. “I wish more of my students had parents like you. You’d be surprised how many parents really don’t know where their kids are most of the time.”

  “Excuse me,” he said with a grin, “but I’m having a bit of a problem thinking of you as a guidance counselor when you’re standing in front of me naked as the day you were born.”

  “And I’m having a bit of a problem thinking of you as a conscientious parent when you’re having to sneak around to see me and having calls forwarded from your office.”